Sarajevo Daily

The war in Bosnia began as a conflict between Serb nationalists intent on carving out their own ethnically pure state and Bosnian citizens who wanted their country to remain undivided. Nowhere was it fought more intensely than in Sarajevo, a city famous for its interfaith tolerance and cultural diversity. Besieged and bombarded, the people of Sarajevo struggled heroically to maintain their prewar lives and traditions. Tom Gjelten captures the whole Sarajevo saga in the story of Oslobodjenje, the city's celebrated daily newspaper. The ten-story Oslobodjenje headquarters was one of the first buildings targeted by Serb nationalist gunners, and within months it was blasted and burned nearly to the ground. But the Oslobodjenje staff - Muslims, Serbs, and Croats working together - retreated to an underground shelter and miraculously managed to continue publishing throughout the siege of Sarajevo, every single day. Their unbroken record testifies to the resilience of Sarajevo's population at large, while their private crises, quarrels, and passions mirror the life of a multiethnic community under nationalist assault. By tracking Oslobodjenje's story from the prewar period through Sarajevo's darkest days to the final stages of despair and disillusion, Tom Gjelten illuminates the issues at the heart of the Bosnian conflict. By setting his war chronicle at a newspaper, he explores the role of a free press in wartime and provides an intimate account of Sarajevo and its struggles as experienced by real people in their daily lives.